Mozzarella Stuffed Bacon Burgers with Homemade Salsa

Since the sun finally decided to grace upstate with it's presence it seemed like a good time to post a slightly more gourmet take on the cheese burger to get ready for summer grilling time.  We made this down in St. John so shout out to my dad for doing the grilling and my mom for rounding out the burger with all the side dishes. 

Instead of putting together "full" meals (protein, vegetable, starch) every time I eat I tend to have a meat meal (breakfast), a veggie meal (lunch), and a fruit based snack (dinner), it's easier to coordinate that way.  Unfortunately most people expect a "full" meal which I don't like doing so thankfully my mother was there to manage that.

In only 52 weeks I'll be on the plane to St. Thomas for next years spring break...not that I have a countdown going or anything.  Scary thought...that could be my last spring break...like ever.  I'm not ready to be a real person, I'm content being a fake person, or college student, whichever you prefer.

One other quick note.  Beef would work perfectly fine with this (and really any recipe I post that calls for bison).  I use bison because this past summer I did an ALCAT test to check for any other possible food allergies/sensitivities and of course my favorite foods: coconut, egg yolks, and beef came back positive.  Since those were foods I relied heavily on after my gluten diagnoses I risk becoming intolerant of those foods...gotta rotate your foods!  So to make my body happy I took coconut out of my diet for 6 months and beef and eggs out for a year (due to varying levels of sensitivity). 

Ingredients:

• Bison (a pound and a half made 5 burgers)
• Bacon (I think all I managed to refrain from eating after breakfast was 3-4 slices)
• Mozzarella- Buffalo or similar...not the shredded pizza topping kind
• Avocados
• 3? Tomatoes
• A Bunch of Cilantro
• 2? Cloves of Garlic
• Lime Juice (we only had half a lime so we supplement with key limes because we have a key lime tree...it added just the right hint of sweetness to the salsa)
• tsp? Olive Oil
• Onions (we didn't have any but I think adding some onion to the salsa would be really good)
• Jalapeno (again we didn't have but would be nice in the salsa...I asked my dad if we had a jalapeno plant and he offered to plant one but I didn't think I would have gotten my jalapenos in time)
• Salt

Directions (Salsa):

1. You'll probably want to make this an hour or two ahead of time so the flavors have time to mix and become super delicious
2. Dice your tomatoes, cilantro, garlic, onions, jalapenos etc. and mix together
3. Juice your lime and add to salsa
4. Add a splash of olive oil to your salsa to cut some of the acidity and salt to taste

Directions (Burgers):

1. Cook bacon and TRY not to eat it all then dice into small pieces and mix with ground bison
2. Form a burger with the diameter you want but only half the meat
3. Put a bunch of mozzarella on the burger (like you're making a cheese burger) leaving a fingers width around the edges (if I hadn't been so fixated on making these quickly because I really really wanted to try them I would have taken a picture of this step).  Think two concentric circles where rmeat>rcheese (radius of the meat is bigger than the radius of the cheese....what do you expect? I'm an engineer!)...or you could just use this.
4. Top your burger with more meat being careful to seal the seams around the outside and not let any cheese come through or you'll have a nasty mess on your grill
5. Grill the burgers maybe 5 minutes a side?
6. Slice avocado and take the salsa out of the fridge to let it warm up
7. Top burger with avocado and salsa and try not to inhale the burger like my dog inhales her dinner (seriously...she doesn't chew!)

As our side dishes we had a salad and salt potatoes (we had to appease our not primal diners somehow).  Salt potatoes are something my dad fell in love with last fall in the Ithaca airport after dropping me off at school.  You boil potatoes in a shit ton of salt.  I was pretty indifferent about them.  Also, I forget how necessary it is for not primal people to eat every 4-5 hours when I can easily do 24...yay for being fat-adapted!